Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) (49 page)

On Lord George’s arrival at Ruthven on the 17th, he found that the prince had kept back for his own use a sum of money that was to have been distributed among the starving troops.
¹¹⁰
This seemed such a bizarre departure from the previously agreed arrangements that the rumour gained ground that the prince had no intention of keeping the rendezvous at Ruthven. The clans had been enticed
there
, it was alleged, to lure Cumberland after them while the prince made good his escape.

Angry at what he considered Charles Edward’s duplicity, and in the hot-blooded frustration of defeat, Lord George Murray dashed off a furious letter, excoriating the prince for everything from arriving in Moidart without French assistance to his direction of the battle the day before. This coldly self-righteous letter, when received much later, destroyed whatever slim chance Elcho’s advocacy might have had.
¹¹¹
Even if the prince had gone to Ruthven, Murray’s letter would have given him the pretext for doing what he wanted to do anyway: abandon the enterprise. Sheridan and the Irish had by now dinned it into him that it was dangerous to trust the Scots, since to save their own skins they would do to him what they had done to Charles I: betray him to the enemy.
¹¹²
Moreover, they insinuated that the losses sustained at Culloden were much greater than they were. The prince sincerely believed Lochiel had been killed as well as Keppoch. Besides, since Murray had virtually accused the prince of bad faith, he could hardly maintain that he stood in need of such a leader.

The prince therefore sent his final orders to the army at Ruthven. First there was a verbal message: ‘Let every man seek his safety in the best way he can.’
¹¹³
Then came a formal written communication. He told them he was going to France to bring back an army; in his absence the Jacobite leaders should look to their own salvation: in other words,
sauve qui peut
.
¹¹⁴

When this message was received at Ruthven, the wailings and ululations of the night after Culloden were rekindled. Dazed and staggered, the clansmen suddenly realised that they had been left to Cumberland’s dubious mercies. They did not see things at all in the same way as the prince. They were confident the struggle could be continued, that a guerrilla campaign was feasible. Now it was their turn to feel betrayed. It seemed to them that the prince was deserting an army that was bigger than ever. The prince’s reputation in Scotland never recovered from his message to his troops in Ruthven. Even stalwart supporters like John Roy Stewart became disillusioned at this point.
¹¹⁵

Whether a guerrilla campaign was feasible at this stage is a moot point. About 4,000 men eventually assembled at Ruthven. On the other hand, only Ogilvy’s and Cluny MacPherson’s regiments were intact. And there were no adequate food supplies. But the prince, it was widely felt, had gathered his men together in Badenoch as bait for Cumberland while he saved his own skin.

The accusation that it was the instinct of self-preservation that led
the
prince to abandon his followers is a valid one, though true in a sense other than that normally used by his detractors. It was not cowardice or self-preservation in its ordinary sense (‘saving one’s skin’) that led the prince to abandon his men, but a desire to be free of the strains of responsibility. It was stress and depression that placed him
hors de combat
for the first three months of 1746. It was the absence of stress that enabled him to bloom like the heather through which he was hunted as a fugitive for the next five months.

(April–June 1746)

AFTER THE CONFERENCE
with Lord Lovat, the prince did not tarry long in Fraser country, thinking it dangerous to rest so near the enemy the night after a battle.
¹
He and his party pressed on to the Glengarry country. At 2 a.m., just after the setting of the moon, they arrived, exhausted, at Invergarry Castle.
²
Ned Burke, the guide, produced a scratch meal of two salmon and an oatcake. Then the party napped fitfully.
³

At 3 p.m. on the 17th the prince set out again, with Ned Burke, O’Sullivan and Father MacDonald.
⁴
Riding along the north-western side of Loch Lochy, with the dark and steep mountains on their right, they swung west to Loch Arkaig. After locating the cottage of Donald Cameron of Glenpean at about 2 a.m., the prince lay down to sleep in earnest for the first time in five days and nights.
⁵

The pattern of resting by day and travelling by night continued. It was 5 p.m. before the prince resumed his journey. After eating a meal of milk and curds, he waited to hear the latest news of his army.
⁶
The prince later disingenuously claimed that he waited until all hope of reassembling his forces was gone.
⁷
If it was gone, the reason why was clear! But he did receive a message from Lochiel, whom he believed dead. Lochiel informed him that after being carried from the field of Culloden by his clansmen, he was placed, wounded in both legs, in a crofter’s cottage nearby. By mere chance, Cumberland’s troops, who were on the point of entering the cottage in search of Jacobite fugitives, were called away on other duty by their officer.
⁸
Lochiel was then conveyed to Cluny’s house in Badenoch.

After leaving Glenpean in the early evening, the prince and his companions confronted the Braes of Morar. The way ahead was so rough that the horses had to be left behind.
⁹
Walking by a winding
path
, they marched the eighteen miles to the glen of Meoble south of Loch Morar in darkness. They arrived at 4 a.m. on the 19th.
¹⁰
Here they were put up ‘in a little sheal house near the wood’
¹¹
by Angus MacEachine, sometime surgeon in Glengarry’s regiment and Borrodale’s son-in-law. The prince was so tired that he could neither eat nor drink and required the help of one of his party to get into bed.
¹²

The prince slept most of the day. That night, under a moon ‘four days from the full’ he walked to Borrodale on the north shore of the sea-loch Nan-Uamh where he had landed nearly a year before.
¹³

He remained at Borrodale for five days. For greater security he chose not to sleep in Borrodale’s house but in a cottage in nearby Glenbeasdale. He was able to rest and recuperate from the exertions of the past few days. O’Sullivan recorded that the prince did well: he had lamb, meal and butter to eat and straw to lie on.
¹⁴
This was the prince’s first regular food since the supper at Lord Lovat’s the night after Culloden.

At Borrodale Charles made serious plans for the crossing to France. Still harbouring the illusion that the Skye chieftains were his friends, he asked Donald Macleod, a seventy-year-old loch seaman from Dunvegan, to carry a message to Macleod and Sir Alexander MacDonald, asking for their assistance.
¹⁵
Macleod (tenant of Gualtergill on Loch Dunvegan), who had been sent to the prince as a guide by Aeneas MacDonald, knew very well what the sentiments of the Skye chiefs were. Angrily he remonstrated with the prince for wanting to trust men who would deliver him to the Hanoverians as soon as look at him; he refused the commission. Instead, he proposed to take the prince over the Minch to the Hebrides.
¹⁶
There they should easily be able to find a ship bound for France or, failing that, a boat for the Orkneys, whence the prince could escape to Norway.

The prince fell in with this proposal. Macleod departed to find a suitable boat. Charles stayed on in the neighbourhood of Borrodale, holding daily conferences with young Clanranald and MacDonald of Boisdale.
¹⁷
It was probably at Borrodale that Lord George Murray’s angry letter of 17 April caught up with him and confirmed him in his decision. This would explain his reiterated farewell to the clan chiefs.
¹⁸

One event soured his stay in Borrodale. Hearing that Elcho was now at Kinlochmoidart House, the prince ordered him to seek out Lochiel and put himself at the Cameron chief’s disposal. Elcho indignantly replied that he intended never to fight under the Stuart banner
again
.
¹⁹
His long vendetta with the prince, destined to last for forty years, had begun.

The Elcho message revived all Charles Edward’s worst feelings about the Scots and their alleged potential for treachery. He wrote to Sheridan to say that one of the principal motives for his immediate departure for France was fear of betrayal. Because he suspected that there were traitors in his entourage at that very moment, the prince added, his location and planned departure must at all times be concealed.
²⁰

Donald Macleod returned with a stoutly-built, eight-oared boat and a crew of seven.
²¹
At nightfall on 26 April the prince embarked, together with Macleod, O’Sullivan, Ned Burke, O’Neill and Father Allan MacDonald.
²²
Donald Macleod warned the prince not to put to sea at this time as he could sense a storm in the offing, but Charles was adamant.
²³
By the time they were out in the Sound of Arisaig, about 9 p.m., one hour after putting to sea, a full gale was blowing with accompanying thunder and lightning.
²⁴
Donald Macleod turned the boat to steer north-west through the Cuillin Sound. Their track would take them to Benbecula, with Eigg, Rhum and Canna on the port side and Skye to starboard.
²⁵
The prince’s original intention was to make for Eriskay. Had he gone there, he would have run smack into three English men o’ war.
²⁶

Violent south-easterly winds beat against the boat. As they rounded the point of Arisaig, the bowsprit broke.
²⁷
They were now making headway by dead reckoning, in the pitch-black and with no compass. Macleod suggested putting in to Skye, protesting that they would never reach the Outer Hebrides in such weather. But the prince insisted that landfall had to be somewhere on the Long Island.
²⁸

Macleod hoist sail and prepared to run before the wind. So good was his seamanship that they sighted the coast of the Outer Hebrides by daybreak. The prince, never a good sailor, had lived through a nightmare. He was too sick and dispirited to appreciate Macleod’s skill in keeping them off the rocks of Skye, to admire the many times when he cried ‘luff’ to steer the craft temporarily into the wind.
²⁹
Seasickness blotted out everything else. It was compounded by the ‘bloody flux’ from which the prince suffered throughout his time in the heather.
³⁰
But characteristically Charles Edward hung on grimly and uncomplainingly. Lack of physical courage was never his problem. As the worst of the seasickness abated, he led the sailors in Highland songs and took his turn at bailing.
³¹
This was a crucial
part
of the trip: at one time the boat seemed to be filling with water faster than they could bail.
³²

Out of the early morning mist loomed Benbecula, between North and South Uist. Landing with difficulty in the midst of the gale, they hauled the boat on shore at Rossinish. It was about 7 a.m. on the morning of 27 April. In the teeth of the elements they struggled up the beach. The wind blew so strongly that they could scarcely put one foot in front of another.
³³

They found a deserted hut, made a fire and dried their clothes. The prince lent a hand in the fire-making. His help was necessary, for the rowers were all in.
³⁴
The wherewithal to revive them was also lacking – all they had to hand was biscuit spoiled by the sea water.
³⁵
A jug of milk was all they could procure from the local people. They guessed who their visitor was and feared the consequences if they helped him too openly.
³⁶

There were cows grazing on the island. The prince, always scrupulous in matters of property, ordered his men to shoot a few for food, saying he would compensate the owners on his restoration.
³⁷

The beasts were shot, the butchery commenced. While the beef was being prepared, it was noticed that there was a hole in the cooking pot. The hole had to be stuffed with rags before the pot was put on the fire. This greatly amused the prince.
³⁸

They remained on Rossinish until the evening of the 29th. The prince received a visit from Old Clanranald, one of the many chiefs who had sent his son ‘out’ to represent him.
³⁹
Clanranald, seeing the possible demise of the entire clan system now looming as a possibility, urged him to stay and fight. The old chief’s arguments powerfully impressed Charles Edward. For a while he dithered.
⁴⁰
Almost on cue, a message arrived that shattered any prospect of a guerrilla war. Cumberland had taken Fort Augustus and Loudoun had arrived in Arisaig from Skye. Any guerrilla army would be between a pincer. In particular, the Camerons and MacDonalds would be cut off from the rest of the Jacobite clans. Immediately the prince returned to his resolution of getting away to France. On Clanranald’s advice, he wrote a letter to all the clan leaders, asking them to maintain a skeleton force until he returned with French reinforcements.
⁴¹

On the evening of 29 April they put to sea again, heading for Stornoway.
⁴²
In Lewis the prince’s party was to put about the story that they were shipwrecked natives of Orkney, anxious to charter a ship to take them home. The prince would pose as ‘Mr Sinclair, junior’; O’Sullivan would take the role of his father.
⁴³
But stormy
seas
and a strong south-westerly wind forced them ashore at Scalpay, also known as Glass Island.
⁴⁴